


Insomnia Drabble Series - Variations on a Theme

by Megpie71



Category: From Hell, Ninth Gate (1999), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Genre: Alcohol, Drug Addiction, Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-14
Updated: 2004-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megpie71/pseuds/Megpie71
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How various characters manage sleepytime - a set of five drabbles designed to be read as a single work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia Drabble Series - Variations on a Theme

(Jack Sparrow)

Jack has found sex the best sedative. Mind-shattering sex is what can shut down his tired brain, tumble him down into the abyss of blackness for long enough to relax. Then sleep can claim him. If not sex, it has to be rum, and rum comes at a price.

Tonight, it is not enough. Tonight, his mind keeps rolling over the same three or four things, tumbling them over like a wave, and he can't clear his thoughts long enough to sleep. He twitches, shuffles, rolls over and over like a shell tossed up on the shores of rest. 

(Inspector Abberline)

Opium cuts away the bonds that tie him to wakefulness, physically forces him down into the depths of dreaming. He started using it after she'd died, when sleep became elusive and rest was denied him. Now he finds he spends more and more time drifting in dreams, half-sleeping, half-waking, walking through the world of his visions.

Occasionally, he's awake enough to realise he's spending too long in the dream world. At times, he tries to escape from the clutches of the opium in his body, around his mind. Mostly though, he's content to dream. Perchance to finally sleep.

(Ichabod Crane)

He is far too highly-strung. He knows this. He knows if he is to achieve the correct state of mind to slumber, he will need to relax his body, and his mind will follow. Of course he knows this. 

However, there is a difference between knowing and doing, and at this present, his recalcitrant physicality will not allow even a single nerve or fibre to unravel from its state of tightly-wound tension. Neither will his over-wrought mind cease from harping its single note over and over and over: It is real, it is real, it is real! 

(Dean Corso)

It used to be that he didn't so much sleep as collapse, face-down over piles of books. Of course, that was back when he was in college, studying dutifully to become... who knew what. Back before he wised up.

Then he slept comfortably, swaddled in bedclothes and hidden beneath the covers, daring the dreams to come and dig him out. Daring bad memories to come find him. They never did.

These days, he sleeps with one eye open, and doesn't let himself sleep too deeply. He knows he'll pay for it later, but the payoff is worth the risk.

(Sheldon Jeffrey Sands)

In dreams he can see again. In dreams, he gets the flickers of what used to be vision across the back of his brain. This is how he knows he's dreaming. This is why he doesn't want to sleep, why he fights against it like a demon, why he tries to avoid it at every single turn. 

For waking up is like having his eyes gouged out all over again, and the pain was bad enough the first time.

So it's frustrating that El curls up next to him, sleeps like a baby, and drags him down for the ride.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by me trying to get to sleep at about 2am one night, and having problems. I started thinking about how various characters would nod off. The Depp characters stuck in my head, because I think it was Jack bloody Sparrow who was trying to keep me awake.
> 
> Dedicated to: Guede_Mazaka, for making a lot of these characters really live for me.


End file.
